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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25271251">Shadows in the Cathedral</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/athenaiskarthagonensis/pseuds/athenaiskarthagonensis'>athenaiskarthagonensis</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Vampire: The Masquerade</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Camarilla (Vampire: The Masquerade), M/M, Sabbat (Vampire: The Masquerade), cross-sect romance, star-crossed lovers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 08:03:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>867</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25271251</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/athenaiskarthagonensis/pseuds/athenaiskarthagonensis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A Lasombra Cardinal waits for his lover of centuries... a Ventrue Prince... one hundred years after Thorns.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Shadows in the Cathedral</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A very short piece I didn't know what else to do with, just a bit of a scene which came to me and needed writing!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>My footsteps echo.</p><p>I can remember when there was no cathedral here at all. I can remember when the foundations were dug, and when the walls were lofted toward the sky, each heavy block fitted to the next. It was open to the stars for decades then, this place. The stars and the moon. They are hidden now by the ribbed vaults of the ceiling, spidery and heavy and yet paradoxically soaring. Birds nested there, before the vault was closed in. Sometimes, they still do.</p><p>Some of the stones they used to build these walls were cannibalized from buildings older still. Words in ancient Latin are chiseled into some of these, their once-sharp edges worn to smoothness by centuries of rain and wind. </p><p>I can remember when those buildings stood instead.</p><p>Outside the footsteps, the soft hissing of my robes against the cool stone floor is the only sound which fills this space. I am alone, as I would not be if I walked the nave by daylight. If I walked it by daylight, as I have not done once in all my long existence. I lost the sun long before this place was built. Pillars rise in a forest around me, pillars and arches striped in light and dark; the scents are of cold stone, and beeswax, and incense. That scent always clings to me, to my hair and to my skin, to the red, red robes I wear.</p><p>The one who is meeting me tonight has always enjoyed that smell, how it lingers. When he presses his face into the curve of my throat, it transfers to his own ancient flesh as well. He smells of me for nights afterward, he told me once. Of course, it never lasts long. Few things do... except us.</p><p>I pause before the altar and for a moment, meet the eyes of the painted Christ child upon the altarpiece. Tempera and gold and wood, base matter transmuted, like the stone of the walls, into divinity. The Child’s blue-robed mother feeds him red grapes like drops of spilled blood. Blood, which the Child will shed when he grows to manhood. Blood, which grants immortality to the soul in the mystery of communion. It is a fertile metaphor; but the Virgin’s eyes are sad. Perhaps she knows she has given birth to a monster in the shape of a man. (For what else is a being which dies and is reborn, which offers immortality in blood? The metaphor is potent. The monstrosity, unquestionable.)</p><p>I smile, and feel the sharpness of my fangs as an ache in my jaw, and move on. I will meet him in the shadows, as I always do. It is a sign of the fragile balance which has long held between us, that he will come to me in the darkest part of a cathedral. Both are my realm and demesne, after all. The shadows boil around me like living things; I am tempted, as I often am, to reach out and stroke them.</p><p>He has always liked cats. Me, I have my shadows.</p><p>We have ever differed in some ways, he and I. We are not of the same lineage, not even the same Clan, though both of us are High. But he understands the true uses of power, as I do, even if he wields his in a different way. He might even best me were it to come to combat between us. But then again, I might best him instead. Because we are so balanced, there can be this respect between us. Because we do not know which of us would win. There are very few of whom I could say that these nights. And so we still meet at times, as we have always met, despite that we chose different paths at Thorns nigh unto a century ago.</p><p>My shadows spread out from me as I move past the pulpit with its carven Virtues; they spread to fill up the transept nave as I enter it. A shifting mass of blackness, as black as I have been told my aura is by those who can see such things. He will be here soon, and of course none must see us in our little meeting, none must overhear. And it is my little challenge, too. Will he come to me in my shadows, in this cathedral which is mine just as much as they? Will he dare? He always has before, when I set the meeting-place.</p><p>I hear footsteps from the central nave, and I wait. He will know where to come; find the darkest corner, and find me in it. He will breach the darkness; and as I think it, the shadows twitch like living things, or like a veil stirred by a breeze, and there he is. I blink, and imagine him in his toga, blood-purple and embroidered gold, then blink again and see him as he is now.</p><p>One night, I will taste him on my tongue, his thick and ancient blood in my throat. One night, he will have me in turn. For now, we have these meetings, and our lesser pleasures.  </p><p>“Coronatus meus,” I greet him, and I smile.</p>
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